


They Burned Our Storybook

by Goethicite



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Suicide, Terrorism, secondary character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outcome didn't exist in a vacuum.  It's fodder was broken souls driven by their own reasons.  Outcome One died in Pakistan trying to avenge his mother's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Burned Our Storybook

**Author's Note:**

> A (depressing) short I wrote for Julorean. There's a throwaway line in A Fletcher's Hands which said that 'Outcome One wanted to hurt the people who killed his mother.' Julorean said that it made her think One's mother had died at Ground Zero. I fleshed it out a bit more, and she did a quick lookover for me.

Before he was Syed Arnyal, he was Outcome One. Before that he was Jamal Malik. His mother was an Oxford-educated economist originally from Mirpur. She’d married an American Marine she had met in London. Tyrone Freeman was on leave from his post as a training advisor to the British Royal Marines. It was supposed to be a fling, a bright, young PhD candidate and a soldier in a strange, new land. They didn’t expect to like each other the next morning, or to become pen pals, or to fall in love. Fatima Malik got her PhD and moved to the United States with her new husband. She taught at the University of San Diego. He taught at Camp Pendleton.

Jamal was a surprise. With a baby on the way, Tyrone didn’t re-up. Instead, he prepared for life as a stay-at home father. No longer bound to California, Fatima took a job as a consultant in New York City. It was work she could do from the comfort of her own couch while Tyrone remodeled the historical townhouse. So Jamal was born into a happily middle-class family with two loving, adoring parents and a good school. Fatima taught her son Urdu as his father taught him English. She wanted him to have that connection to his background. Jamal played soccer and could have gone pro. Instead, he joined the Navy and earned his trident as a SEAL as much for his brains as for his physicality.

Fatima worried. Tyrone worried too, but he just told his son he was proud and comforted his wife. So what happened next rocked the happy, little family’s world at the foundation until it all fell apart. Fatima was at a meeting when the first plane hit. She was near the top floor and didn’t make it before the staircase collapsed. Instead, she huddled next to a window, staring out blindly in the direction of the warm, restored townhouse where her husband was making dinner as the floor caved in.

Tyrone ran to Ground Zero. He’d started driving when the smoke plume appeared on the news, but the traffic was so bad in Manhattan he abandoned his Civic in an alley and started jogging. The first tower had come down by the time he arrived. He told Jamal when he called his son with the terrible news that he knew Fatima was dead as soon as he saw the nightmare Art Deco of concrete and steel beams.

Jamal wept after his father hung up, his swim buddy hanging on tight to his shoulder. He’d lost two parents on September eleventh. Tyrone Freeman had always been a strong man. He was a good Marine for it and a great husband. His greatest joy in life had been his wife and the home they built together, but those men on the plane had found the lynchpin that held the powerful machine together. Without Fatima to center him, Tyrone’s world stopped. Jamal heard it over the phone and knew that the terrorists had killed an old soldier as well as an innocent woman. Even so, Tyrone kept breathing out of the knowledge Fatima’s son was still in the world.

Outcome sought out Jamal’s swimbuddy, a grim-faced, divorced man with little family. They came away with Jamal instead. The night before he disappeared into the program for good, he called his father to tell him that he wouldn’t be coming home. Ever. The government had offered him a way to end the people who’d killed the only woman for both of them. Tyrone cried silently, told his son Godspeed and I love you, and then hung up. He shot himself on his marriage bed which Fatima had made him disassemble and ship from Britain. Jamal was in the middle of the induction process when the trainer informed him of his father’s death. There were so many psychoactives in his system, he didn’t actually feel anything. He just nodded and went back to his program.

Tyrone Freeman was buried by his friends, old buddies, and neighbors. He’d been a popular man, a smiling face on the sidewalk and avid volunteer in the community. His funeral was well attended enough no one noticed two more bodies in the back pew. Some of the veterans wondered where a sergeant, long retired, became friends with officers like that, but the two officers were quiet, respectful, and left too soon for anyone to ask questions. Byer saw to it the funeral was paid for in full and Outcome One received the notes of condolence even if the asset never read them.


End file.
